The Importance of the Comfort Zone in EV Design

Seth Porges thinks the secret to the future success of electric vehicles is to make sure than don't slip too far out of our 'comfort zone' in design and operation.

Published: 17-Dec-2012

If you think about it, the electric car is an incredible act of deception. Sure, the vehicles may look pretty much exactly like the sedans that have filled our roads for the past hundred years, but once you scrape away the shell, their streamlined electric drivetrains and battery packs have almost nothing in common with the pistons and gears of a gasoline-powered car. At their core, electric cars are remarkable pieces of technology, masquerading as the unremarkable vehicles of decades past.

And this deception doesn’t stop with appearances. You only need a couple of minutes behind the wheel of an EV to realize its designers did just about everything they could to make these machines feel like the cars we’re familiar with.

Of course, the impetus for this is obvious. Car makers need to convince a skeptical population that EVs won’t bring them too far outside their comfort zone. Only once car makers have gotten a potential buyer behind the wheel can they blindside them with the benefits. I’m not just talking about the obvious energy efficiency. If you’ve never driven an all-electric car, the first time you hit the accelerator and feel the instant torque that EV engines can produce is nothing short of a thrill.

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